


Moonshot

by grandfatherclock



Series: Widojest Week 2019 [3]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 10:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20062762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grandfatherclock/pseuds/grandfatherclock
Summary: The thing isbroken. It’s been broken for what must’ve been hundreds of years—the magic is inconsistent and rudimentary. It spluttered, the evocation runes around it glowing and simmering before dyingout. Calebswore, hissingScheisse, Scheisse, Scheisse, and began to fiddle with it with his insufficient materials and components at his disposal. He even tugged out his holy symbol in his desperation, the symbol with the opposite-facing crescent moons on a diamond—andprayed. There were goddamntearsin his eyes.But now it’sglowing.





	Moonshot

**Author's Note:**

> Reminder that all fic is freely given—if one isn't to your oh so high standards, write your own. Quality isn't measured in word count, and it certainly isn't measured in dismissive comments that ironically in critiquing the quality of other work are themselves riddled with typos and grammatical errors. This is to a specific person—please go fuck yourself.

Caleb blinks at the glowing sending stone. It’s a strange little object, carved from a red material he determined by _Identity_ to be _dacite_, with a generic humanoid face with blank eyes and outstretched, almost _bitter_ seeming smile—though, he thinks with a dark glower, it could be his own perpetual grimace colouring his perspective. When he found it amongst the white dirt along the rugged surface of the moon, his heart soared with _hope_. He thought foolishly that this little trinket could offer him his salvation, and the way his lips quirked up into that hopeful, broken smile, the Archeart must’ve barked out a laugh.

The thing is _broken_. It’s been broken for what must’ve been hundreds of years—the magic is inconsistent and rudimentary. It spluttered, the evocation runes around it glowing and simmering before dying _out_. Caleb _swore_, hissing _Scheisse, Scheisse, Scheisse_, and began to fiddle with it with his insufficient materials and components at his disposal. He even tugged out his holy symbol in his desperation, the symbol with the opposite-facing crescent moons on a diamond—and _prayed_. There were goddamn _tears_ in his eyes. 

_Nothing_. There was _nothing_, and Caleb nearly threw out his symbol outside _Leomund’s Tiny Hut_ in his frustration, forcing his arm to still at the last moment, the hand holding it raised and trembling. He exhaled through his teeth, forced his racing thoughts to subside into a frightening blankness—blank like the white walls, blank like the drugs in his system that made his head all light and fuzzy and _empty, _so _empty_, blank like the white of Master Ikithon’s robes—and shoved the symbol back into the pocket of his coat. _Like it would be this easy_, he thought then, all numb and tense. His jaw was clenched.

But now the sending stone is _glowing._

Caleb stares at the glowing eyes, the bright white arcane light different from the orange hue the _Dancing Lights_ usually wash him and his clothes and his components in. It’s nearly _blinding_, and Caleb _grimaces_, raising a hand above his face as he gazes it. Normally it burns itself out after a good minute or so, and so he waits, bracing himself on his forearms. He’s _such_ a light sleeper, the small shifts of Astrid in his bed used to be able to startle him awake. It’s so _typical_ the heat radiating from the broken stone in his coat pocket would force his bleary eyes to open, make his body move uncomfortably. He waits resentfully for the stone to shut _off_, waiting one minute, and then _two_—and then, the more time that passes where the stone doesn’t blink shut, Caleb’s shoulders tense.

“_Nein_,” he murmurs in disbelief, his voice interrupting the solemn, stiffening silence. The rolling rocky hills are quiet and motionless around his little hut, situated on a flat plane, and Caleb stares for a moment at the little pathway he’s made over the last three months, carefully making the hut just a couple metres forward each eight hours, traversing the moon’s surface in this painfully slow, horrifying pattern. This horrible daily routine in this dreary nightmare that has become his life. The only spell the Archeart bothered to teach him. Just enough to keep his pathetic existence alive on a moon that has no _fucking_ air, though he can’t quite fucking complain. It’s more than he deserves. 

The sending stone stares at him, bright and twinkling.

Caleb _grabs_ for it, nearly stumbling as he does. The dust reacts _up_ before slowly floating back down to the ground, and Caleb stares at the rock in his hand, at the bright eyes that seem to _watch_ his movement. In his hands, evocation symbols begin to extend out from the runes engraved onto the red dacite. His breathing uneven, Caleb closes his eyes for a moment and thinks of his parents’ faces—_Mother_, with her curly red hair and that gentle smile, and _Father_, with his stern eyes and crossed arms—and says those arcane words to unlock the message, his words nearly stumbling over each other.

For a moment, the stone is _silent_, and Caleb prepares for his brittle heart to break _again_—this is what his life has become, a dull pattern of daily heartbreaks, and _it’s what he deserves, more than what he deserves, better than what he deserves_, he reminds himself—and _then_—

_Oh, hi_, a strange lilting voice _sings_, and Caleb _blinks_. It’s _very_ non-Empire, non-Zemnian, but there’s something in how the words drawl that reminds him of the south, of the dignitaries Master Ikithon once had him meet from the Menagerie Coast. _Gottverdammt_, it’s been so _long_ since he’s thought about the strange geography of Exandria, of Wildemount, and Caleb turns, looking to the large planet with its blue oceans and jagged land masses in front of him. It isn’t to the face of Wildemount right _now_, it’s Tal’dorei. Caleb stands up as the voice pauses, and a moment he’s _terrified _that’s _it_, that’s the _message_, but then he hears a preparing breath.

_Fjord says this is a fraud, but I don’t belieeeeve him._ This strange caller stretches out the word _believe_, and Caleb finds himself smiling helplessly, blinking back tears as he listens to her words. He can hear footfalls behind her, and _Mist_, it’s been so _long_ since he’s heard other people’s _footfalls_. Her accent plays around her Common strangely, endearingly, and Caleb brings it close to his face, trying to get _closer, closer, closer_ to all her damned _warmth._

There’s another pause, and Caleb almost hisses, _No, no, no_, when her light voice cuts through his desperation. _My day was fine, you know? The day was kinda boring, but my Mama_—

Her voice cuts _off_, and Caleb and he nearly _hisses_ in frustration, but—he’s _smiling_. The quirk of his lips isn’t tinged in bitterness, and the tension in his shoulders has lessened for the first time in _forever_. The sending stone, ancient and brittle that is, is _warm_ in his hand, and he blinks at that, his jaw shifting as he brings even closer, no longer bothered by the light. He _craves_ the warmth, _craves_ the light, _craves _that voice, _craves_ the minute sounds behind her—the heaving that is far too fucking familiar, from a _hound_, the light murmuring behind this woman, this bright voice—and he begins to _respond_, begins to mouth the message for help he’s long since memorized, in perfectly twenty-five words—

The sending stone shuts off, and Caleb _screams._


End file.
